Highlights

The previous year of 2020 has certainly been a year of challenges, uncertainty, and partnerships.

The most significant challenge that has affected Building Prospects is COVID-19.  The COVID-19 crisis has been impacting economies, (financial) markets and livelihoods around the world with IMF forecasting a global contraction of -4.4% for 2020. The crisis has impacted the equity valuations and has put pressure on the Dollar. For Building Prospects this has become visible through the decreased revolvability. Developing countries and fragile livelihoods suffer disproportionately from the economic fall-out of the necessary containment measures. We anticipate the impact will continue to be evident in the year to come. Building Prospects continues its commitment and Technical Assistance to its customers. 

Much of the uncertainty around the development of this global pandemic has made investing, and in particular the due diligence process, more challenging, resulting in a decreased production expectation for 2021. Building Prospects continues to focus on sourcing deals under the three investment themes of investing in the broad agribusiness value chain. Strong agribusiness value chains need access to energy, water, logistics and transports, all framed within the context of climate change resilience and mitigation. 

BP continued to support development of the Forestry sector, which is increasingly important from a climate impact perspective.

Under the banner of partnership, Building Prospects joined FMO, MASSIF and Access to Energy fund to launch the FMO Ventures program that became operational in August 2020.  The program, through funds, actively invests in eligible technology-enabled companies in any of its three focus sectors: Fintech, Energy Access, and Agritech but also other relevant and impactful sectors such as Edutech, Healthtech, and Mobility.

During the year Building Prospects warehoused three of the ventures investments, namely Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, WayCool, Green AgRevolution. They were transferred to the Ventures program in the third quarter.